


Will/Dogs Drabbles

by hailtherandom



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dogs, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-23
Updated: 2013-06-30
Packaged: 2017-12-15 20:49:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 5,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/853901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hailtherandom/pseuds/hailtherandom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of unrelated drabbles about Will and his dogs. </p><p>Will add tags/update ratings as it becomes relevant. Will hopefully post a new one every day.<br/>*Angst tag applicable to chapter 8.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In Laine and my headcanon, Will's dogs are named Thoreau, Maupin, Theodore, Marie, Mako, Rosalind, and Winston. This is the headcanon that will be used throughout the drabbles.

One. 

Will clings desperately to Thoreau, burying his face in shaggy fur and smiling a little as a rough tongue licks at his ear. He pulls the covers over himself and his dog, curling around it. The blanket shifts as Thoreau wags his tail, bumping his nose against Will's head. At some point, so late at night it's early, the dog gets overheated and squirms out of Will's grip, only to curl up against his new owner on top of the blanket. Will pulls an arm free from the damp sheet and scratches Thoreau's head. The thump of a tail on the blanket matches his heartbeat.

Two.

Will chuckles as Maupin climbs onto his back. She's smaller, and therefore can get away with it. Thoreau watches from the foot of the bed, eyes glinting in something that Will would swear was amusement. Maupin barks quietly and Will murmurs to her, running his hands from floppy ears to flank. She turns and lies down next to Thoreau, who gives her a cursory sniff and then lets her put her head on his back. Will grins and rolls over onto his side, pressing one foot against his dogs' bellies, just to make sure they're still there.

Three.

They swarm over the bed, unable to settle down. It's hot, too hot for Wolf Trap in spring, but Will's thrown the blanket off and is huddled under just a sheet. The dogs refuse to stay down, despite Will's training; when he pushes them off the bed or tells them to lie down, they comply for all of about ninety seconds before they're jumping back up onto the mattress and whining through damp fur. Will rolls slowly from side to side, tries to accommodate the mass of movement, but eventually the clock ticks forward into one and two and three and he ends up ushering them out into the living room and closing the door. For once, the whining doesn't bother him too much.

Four. 

It's halfway pleasant right now, having dogs cover every inch of the bed that he himself does not occupy. It feels close, and safe, because everywhere he turns, there's a warm body bracketing his, keeping him anchored in bed. He can't stretch much - it _is_ only _halfway_ pleasant - but it is comforting. Will hasn't sleepwalked since he picked up his fourth, and he attributes it to the fact that he can't actually get out of bed without a great deal of effort. The newest dog licks his face and Will groans, but he doesn't mind too much. Instead he just rubs his dogs' bellies and murmurs quiet praises and the sound of thumping tails fill the room. Will smiles and rolls over to sleep as much as he can, and when he wakes up in the morning, he's still in his bed.

Five.

He tried. He really does.

He tries to pile them all onto the bed with him, but it just doesn't work. It's a decent sized bed, but Will knows that it wasn't designed to hold six living bodies. He gets woken up more than once by the loud thunking noise of a dog falling off the bed and barking its displeasure. He tries pulling blankets over them, to make sure they can't move, but that's unpleasant for everyone, and the dogs make him pay for that idea. Finally, he caves and drives out to a pet store and buys five dog beds of varying sizes. The dogs take a couple of days to adjust, but eventually they seem happy enough to curl up on their own cushions at the foot of Will's bed at night. Will misses the heat and slow breathing.

The next time he finds a dog, he doesn't try to bring it onto his bed. No point in excluding the others.


	2. Chapter 2

Will hates the rainy season.

His dogs do not share that opinion.

Will hates the rain because it drenches his house and sometimes it seeps in through the cracks in his roof and wake him up with rhythmic taps falling on the ground. It soaks the property out back and turns it into a giant mud hole that takes days, sometimes weeks to dry out once the rain stops.

That's exactly why the dogs love it. 

He forgets to close the door all the way, just once, but suddenly Rosalind is barking and bounding outside into the rain. Will jumps up as the door bangs shut behind her, and he curses as he pulls on his jacket and chases after her. Some of the other dogs take interest, barking excitedly and running after Will like they think he's leading them in some elaborate chasing game, until Will's got three dogs by the collars and mud up to his knees and coating his arms and spattered across his face. 

He drags them all up to the porch and digs out the wash basin, then fills it up with clean water. He sprays each of the dogs down with a hose - much to their howling chagrin - , then tugs Maupin into the basin and starts scrubbing her down. He doesn't bother to dry her, not yet, just nudges her out of the way and dumps out the basin and refills it and starts over with Rosalind. She sprays water all over him when she shakes herself dry, but he's drenched in mud already and he just laughs.

Will is halfway through washing Mako off when Rosalind barks loudly, twice, and takes off running again. She splashes straight through the puddles she ran through the first time, and of course Maupin takes off after her. Will hears scratching at the door, and before he can stop them, two more dogs run past him to join the others. 

Will sits hard on the porch, scratching at Mako's wet fur, and laughs. It's a tired laugh, but it's genuine.

He grabs one of the spare towels that he keeps hanging by the door and ushers Mako out, dries him down as thoroughly as he can, and then half-carries Mako inside, shutting the door tightly behind him. Mako scratches at the door, but he doesn't whine, and Will doesn't try to subdue him.

He whistles loudly and two dogs come trotting over, mud dripping from their fur. He sprays them both with the hose and scrubs them clean as they stand, chagrined, on the porch. He towels them both off together, and they'll need to be washed again soon, but for now it'll do, and they join Mako in being damp but warm inside the house.

Maupin's sitting on the porch waiting for him when the door snaps closed again. Will smiles and leans down to pet her, from head to muddy flanks. She barks and he laughs and her tail beats a rhythm against the porch. She doesn't fight him when he sprays her down, or when he scrubs her clean, and wiggles just a little when he dries her off with the sodden towel. He tells her to take good care of the rest of the dogs as he shuts her inside, and he thinks sometimes that she might actually do it.

Will turns back to the yard and there's only one left. Rosalind rolls around happily in the mud, sending bits of dirt flying in every direction. Her ears perk up as Will approaches her, and she rolls over onto her feet, bouncing a little. Will whistles softly and her head tilts, and when he lunges for her she darks away from him, tail wagging furiously as she runs. Will lets out a breath of laughter and chases after her, sliding in the mud until he slips and catches her under him as he falls. Rosalind barks and struggles but Will just wraps his arms around her and lets his cheek rest against muddy fur for a moment before he drags her off to get cleaned up.

He's better about locking the door after that.


	3. Chapter 3

Will generally doesn't collar his dogs. He doesn't take them out much, and his property is big enough that they can run around without getting lost or picked up by someone else. He likes it better this way, and they seem to as well. 

He hasn't always done that, though.

Thoreau was the first dog Will had had since he was a child, and he wasn't used to caring for one. So he let Thoreau sleep on his bed, fed him out of his refrigerator until he had time to go buy proper dog food, and he bought a leash and a collar. 

Will still has that leash and collar, but it hasn't seen a dog's neck in years.

*

When Will found Thoreau, he wasn't Thoreau, and he had the tattered remains of a leash dragging from a collar with no tag, so Will figured that Thoreau knew how to go for walks. So he unwrapped the soft leather collar and the leash and circled it loosely around Thoreau's neck and made excuses for why the dog whined. He had to drag Thoreau a little at first, until they both got the hang of walking side by side, up past the quiet road that Will lived on and the parks to the streets of Wolf Trap where other people actually lived. Will didn't like it as much as he liked his own property, but getting out would be good for both of them.

Will was expecting to see other people out. Maybe even other people with dogs.

What he wasn't expecting was a loud bark behind him, and then a blur of brown fur bounding toward him at top speed. He lost grip of Thoreau's leash as he ducked to the side, and then lost sight of his dog entirely as the brown fur mass barreled straight into him. He threw out one arm to catch himself and heard a woman's voice yelling over the sound of his heartbeat in his ears and something that might have been his own shout. When he sat up, a young woman had one hand tightly locked around the brown fur mass's collar and she was scolding it firmly. Will blinked a few times, then slowly pulled himself to his feet, wincing as he put weight on his right leg. Thoreau sat quietly, a few yards away. Will whistled and he came trotting over immediately, nosing at Will's knees. 

The woman tried to apologize profusely, but Will just knelt down by his dog and told the ground that it was alright, he understood, dogs could be dogs as he ran his fingers through Thoreau's short fur. She offered him ice, or at the very least a hand up, but he refused and waved her on and pressed tighter to Thoreau. Thoreau licked at his cheek. 

Will waited until the woman and her mass of fur had wandered off before he tried standing up again. Thoreau whined, but Will just shook his head. "C'mon, let's go home. Guess we weren't cut out for suburban Wolf Trap, huh?"

Thoreau whined again and brushed against Will's leg, but set off at a slow trot, the leash dragging after him. Will leaned forward and grabbed it, then carefully unclipped it from Thoreau's collar and shoved it into his jacket pocket. "You know how to get home, don't you?"

Thoreau barked and started walking back the way they'd come, leaving Will to trail after him. When they got home, Will sat on the porch with an ice bag on his leg and he watched Thoreau chase flies all over the back yard until it got too dark to see anything to chase.

They didn't go back out after that, and it suited them both just fine.

 


	4. Chapter 4

He wakes up to a quiet whining noise and a wet nose nudging at his face. Will smiles and shifts a little so the dog can hop up onto the bed with him, but the whining just gets louder and is joined by a muffled shuffling noise. Will opens his eyes and pats the bed, but the dog still stays on the group. Will sighs and rolls over to get off the bed, stops, and then starts laughing.

The dog in question his looking up at him with sad eyes, pretty much the rest of its body criss-crossed with the thread he uses to tie his lures. The spool is knotted around the dog's back leg, which is currently tied to its tail. Tufts of fur pop up around the knots of string and a half-finished lure is dangling from the dog's ear and Will can't help how hard he's laughing.

He stands up and heads toward the living room to grab a pair of scissors, and the dog limps contritely after him. Will finds the small pair of scissors that he usually uses for tying lures - knocked under the desk, along with half of the rest of the desk's contents - and motions for the dog to come sit next to him. The dog whines, and Will soothes it, whispering into its fur and stroking along its back  until the dog settles down enough to lie down at his feet. Will kneels down and carefully starts cutting the thread - the dog's wasted an entire spool on getting tangled up, and it takes a while, between the thin criss-crosses and the knots and the dog's squirming. Will smiles faintly and holds the dog gently by the neck as he cuts through rows and rows of thread, pulling the dog's legs free to loosen and pull away strand after strand. A couple of tufts of fur fall away due to squirming, but after a few minutes, the dog is free, a couple of threads clinging loosely to its ears. It shakes its head and then its body, then pads off into the kitchen to eat, one long thread hanging from its tail. Will laughs quietly, then sets about gathering the thread fragments to throw away and start over with his lure.


	5. Chapter 5

The weed season is bad this year, and the winds don't blow it all down like they sometimes do. Will doesn't mind the weeds themselves so much - there's rarely any grass anyway, and he doesn't spend enough time out back at home to care that much, and the dogs don't seem to mind. They're happy to roll around anywhere.

But the weed season is bad and the seeds don't float away like they should and they don't get buried like they have and they cling to everything, everywhere. Will has to spend five minutes picking burrs out of the legs of his pants before he can even go inside. 

He's sitting at his desk working on a new lure when he hears a low snuffling whine behind him. He turns around and sees Winston, head bowed low as he nudges at the chair. Will reaches over to scratch behind his ears but his fingers find the sharp points of a burr. He gets out of his chair and kneels down in front of Winston, rubbing his head gently. "You go outside, boy?" Will murmurs, feeling for more burrs. "This month's awful for that sort of thing."

Winston whines again, so Will stands up and leads him out back to the porch. Winston lies down miserably and Will gets one of the dog brushes he keeps in his room and sits down next to him. THe burrs are embedded deep in the fur around his flanks, so Will starts there, brushing them out as gently as he can. Winston shifts and makes pitiful noises, but he doesn't howl or bark and he lets Will work.

Winston tenses up as Will looses a few particularly sticky burrs, and Will runs both of his hands over the dog's back, soothing him. "Shhhhh, shh. It's okay, you're doing good. Good boy, Winston." It seems to help a little, and Winston settles down enough that Will can start brushing again.

Eventually the loose burrs work themselves out, and Will has to get down on his knees and free the matted ones by hand. Winston whines loudly every time Will starts on a new one, and Will whispers, "good boy" until he quiets down again and the burrs can be pulled free. 

It takes a good twenty minutes, but eventually there's a pile of burrs lying on the porch. Will kicks them off into the yard with one bare foot, then sits down on the step, allowing Winston to lie half in his lap. He strokes the dog's fur idly as he watches the sky change color. Maybe weed season's not so bad, if it gives him peace like this.


	6. Chapter 6

He doesn't wake up from nightmares tonight, and that's a celebration in itself. Will rolls over in bed and finds that the sheets are dry and bright with filtered sunlight, speckled with fur and wrinkled but clean of sweat and imaginary blood. He rubs his eyes and is almost surprised when it doesn't hurt, when headache doesn't spike through him and force him back down.

When he looks at the clock, it's seven thirty. Will hasn't seen seven thirty the first time he wakes up in a long time. 

He does lie back down, just for a little while, arms tucked under his head and staring at the ceiling as he tries to remember if anything did go wrong. There should be something, there always is - some murder he has to relive, some dead girl that Beverly's going to text him about or Jack's car waiting outside. But there's not. His last case was solved days ago, before anyone else could die. He saw Dr. Lecter a few days after that, and he hadn't had any hallucinations of the stag wandering through the woods of his mind or the woods of his house. Will blinks hard, but the room just shifts back into focus when he opens his eyes again.

The clock says seven thirty-one. He hasn't lost time yet.

Will rolls out of bed and is halfway through a shower before he realizes that he's not sweat-soaked and doesn't need to wash just yet. But the water is hot and inviting and he allows it to beat down on his back, working bits of tension free.

He gets out of the shower and he doesn't have to leave for work until eleven. (The FBI is administering exams this week and next, and class schedules are fucked, but they're fucked in a good way for Will because the exams are during his morning class, so he'll take it.) He walks around his house and feels vaguely at a loss of what do to when he's not forcing himself to stay in reality. It hits him around eight thirty that he's actually hungry for once, and he even has time to make breakfast.

Will goes through his refrigerator and digs out bread for toast and eggs for a scramble and sausage because it'll taste good in the scramble, and wonders exactly when he bought all of this, because he certainly doesn't remember doing it, but he's not going to question it. He beats the eggs in a mug and pours them in a pan, then mixes them up as the bread toasts. The smell of food awakens a couple of the dogs who have been lying in the living room, and they come padding over to see if there's anything they can scrounge. Will puts the pan on another burner for a moment and fills all of the dogs' bowls, and the kitchen is filled with the sound of crunching as well as the sizzle of egg and bits of sausage. Will butters his toast and eats it slowly and relishes the fact that he can take the time to taste something for once. He tries to catch as many details as he can, because he knows himself and he thinks that he'll probably need it next time he forgets to eat for a day and a half and needs to remember how to do it.

By the time Will sits down with a plate of eggs and sausage and a fresh piece of toast, the rest of the dogs have woken up. He smiles as they swarm around him and the food bowls in turn, pleading for a bite of what he's eating and the retreating to what they know they can have. Will picks up a piece of sausage and tosses it in the air. One of the dogs catches it and wags its tail appreciatively, then goes back to the swarm around the bowls. A couple of the others come nosing for food too, so Will picks the sausage out of his scramble and tells them to ask nicely and tosses bits of food in the air or on the ground when they do. The dogs lick at his fingers happily, and Will scratches their heads and feeds them more bits and they rest their heads on his thigh and nuzzle against his legs and he feels content for once.

It takes him a while to realize that he still hasn't really eaten much, and that all of the sausage is gone from his scramble, but he can't really bring himself to mind that much. He eats forkfuls of eggs and pets his dogs in between, and it's a calm morning for once. He needs a morning like this sometimes.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is late because I'm in Santa Cruz for the weekend and therefore am fudging this and saying it's both Friday and Saturday's drabble. Because I can.  
> c:

The worst part about the nightmares, Will thinks, is the waking up. When he's in the nightmare itself, it's terrifying, but when he wakes up, he has all the fear with the bonus of never being sure if it's real. He's fallen out of bed, thrashed in his sheets as they wrapped around him tighter and tighter, stumbled out of the room and straight into the shower and nearly drowned himself trying to settle back into reality. He always takes a while to come back into himself, but he usually does eventually.

Tonight, Will's nightmares are even worse than usual. Jack's got him pulling sixteen hours a day on the case they're working on; he suspects that it might be the Chesapeake Ripper, and even the hint of the Ripper's hands in someone's chest seems to light a fire deep inside Jack these days. He's sent Will back to the crime scene over and over, even taking him at night once, urging him to see more and more until Will mumbled something about ribs breaking and called for a cab home. He'd barely stayed awake the entire ride home, and had collapsed into bed right after, shaking and sweating and rubbing his eyes furiously, trying to rub the image of shattered bone and gushing blood from his retinas. He can barely sleep these days, but wants nothing more to be wrapped in unconsciousness for as long as possible.

Tonight - this morning? Will has no idea anymore - his mind is scarred with shards of bones sticking out of men's necks, all the way through their vocal cords and into Will's, goring upwards and tearing his face in half. He rears back and impales himself on something - he doesn't realize what until he hears the low groan of the Ravenstag behind him, nudging him forward into the victim's body until they are one and the same and Will is trapped inside flesh that is not his own, clawing at the man's insides as he tries to fight his way up.

Will sits bolt upright, panting hard, scrambling off of his bed and against the wall. He scratches at his arms, doesn't even notice whether the red marks on his skin are scratches or proper blood. His forehead is drenched in sweat and maybe tears, Will can't tell anymore because his breath is so loud that he can almost hear it over his heart pounding in his head. But it doesn't fade and it doesn't lessen and it doesn't even stay the same, because in Will's head, he's still trapped inside the body of the man he imagined killing a dozen and a half times and he desperately wants to get out because he _cannot_ die again, not even in his dreams. Not even at his own hand.

Will feels a flickering pressure on his arms and lashes out without thinking. He hears a sharp noise and skittering against the wood floor. _Dog_ , Will's mind helpfully supplies. He blinks his eyes open and sees one of the dogs - fuck if he knows which right now, he's doing well to recognize it has four legs - standing a couple of feet from him, just out of arm's reach. Will takes a deep breath and lets it out as slowly as he can and the dog trots forward again. It licks tentatively at his hand and he lets it.

The next breath comes easier.

The dog licks at Will's arm some more, where he'd accidentally broken the skin, and the faint red lines grow even fainter as the pinpricks of blood are rinsed away. Will sighs and doesn't take the next breath like it's being ripped away from him. He instead holds his arm up and the dog - Mako, maybe, or Marie - shuffles up to him and tucks itself up against his chest. It licks at his face, swiping its tongue through sweat and Will lets out a couple of stuttering breaths before he lets himself close his eyes again. 

More clicking against wood and then there's a cold nose at Will's other cheek. He raises his hand without looking and runs it through Thoreau's shaggy fur. There's a tongue at his chin, then a fur-covered skull as Thoreau nudges under Will's chin. Will murmurs "good boy" and scratches behind Thoreau's ears, and is rewarded with tail thumps that he matches his heartbeat to.

His fingers twitch with the feeling of being trapped but his dogs just lick them away, nosing at his hands and under his arms and up against his legs until there's no stags or blood or dead flesh anywhere, just warm, moving fur. 

The next breath he takes is easy, and the one after that, and the one after that.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angst tag added for this chapter.

Will hates tornado season. The dogs do too.

It's the first time since he's lived here that the tornadoes have gotten anywhere near his house, but he feels the brunt of the damage. There's weather damage in the walls, and a tree fell onto his car, smashing it beyond recognition. (Will had cursed and panicked and then cursed some more when he'd come back from Maryland once the worst of the damage was over. The dogs were still checked into the kennel he'd left them at when he left, but he wished that he had them with him now.) 

He goes to his insurance company to see about getting money for his car, but his rates are shit and it's not nearly enough, so he has to dip into his savings, and by "dip into" he means "empty entirely". It buys him a rental - because he's gotten this teaching job too recently to even think about asking for time off - and half of the repairs he needs, and he staples tarps over the walls with the worst wear and pretends like they won't grow mold that he'll have to take care of in the future.

Will picks the dogs up from the kennel and pays more than he'd like to - more than he has - then takes them home. The three of them swarm into the house ahead of him, barking happily and then skittering to a halt as they scent out waterlogged drywall. Will just nods to himself and murmurs, "I know, I know." He strips off his shoes and his pants and his shirt on the way to the bedroom, leaving a trail of clothes that the dogs shuffle after. He crawls into bed and they crawl in with him, huddling from the damp and the damage that's half-destroyed the front of the house. Will's bedroom is a sanctuary, of sorts - it's the only room in the house that doesn't have warped walls or cracks that let in the wind.

He heads to work in the morning and buys something cheap to tide him over. The stove had blown out, and the electricity too for a few days, so any food that was left was too rotten to eat and couldn't be cooked anyway. Will sighs as he forces his way through convenience store coffee. He'll have to completely restock.

He teaches his classes without any real enthusiasm, but his students get the information they need and at least a couple of them look like they might have learned something, so he counts it as a victory. He wanders through the staff parking lot for five minutes before he remembers the rental car, and then gets lost on the way home because he's too busy thinking about what he can dig out for dinner to remember to turn onto his street. The dogs greet Will when he gets home, jumping up against his leg and licking his hands and Will smiles and scratches their heads and kneels down to hold them close and breathe in the scent of their fur over the smell over drywall and overturned dirt outside. They mill around him as he changes out of his work shirt into a t-shirt, throws his laptop case on his bed, puts his shoes in the closet and his socks in the laundry and his glasses on the bedside table. Then he gets up and goes to the kitchen and opens the refrigerator for dinner and backpedals furiously as the smell of rotten food hits him at full force and everything comes back. 

Will gets a garbage bag and clears everything out of the refrigerator as fast as he can to dump in the trash bin outside his house. The dogs watch on, horrified.

Will sighs as he lets himself back in and goes to the cupboard to feed the dogs if he can't feed himself. He opens the cabinets and digs out a bag of dog food, then sighs deeply because that's empty too and there's nothing but crumbly bits of dust at the bottom. Maupin nudges up next to him and sniffs and the bag and Will shrugs at her as he crumples up the bag. Then he stands up, tosses the bag in the sink, and goes into his bedroom to grab his wallet and keys and go to the store.

Will wanders up and down the aisles in a half-daze. The first thing he does is go buy a new bag of dog food, and it's not as good as what he'd usually get but it's big and it will last them a while, if he doesn't pick up another stray. He grabs a couple of frozen dinners for himself without really looking - Will so rarely cares about what he eats these days, as long as it's not going to make him sick. He doesn't even really think about money until suddenly he's at the checkout counter and the cashier is asking him for ten dollars more than he has to his name. Will blinks a few times and recounts crumpled ones in his wallet, but she's right, and he's only got enough money for either the dog food or the frozen dinners.

Will tilts his head to the side, then sighs deeply and says, "I'll take these back, just check out the dog food please." The cashier shakes her head, maybe seeing something in his eyes, and says that she'll take care of it, no problem. She rings him up and double bags the dog food and hands him fourteen cents in change and he shoves it in his pocket and doesn't think about it again. 

He carries the dog food home in the passenger's seat like another person, seatbelted in so that it doesn't lurch forward at a stoplight. Will makes a mental note to not drive anywhere except work until he gets paid again next week as he pulls up to his house. The dogs lurk in the windows, and Will would swear they look worried.

He fills their bowls and even gives them a bit extra, and the dogs wag their tails as they eat. Will sits back in his chair and watches them, running his hand over fur whenever a dog wanders over to sniff at him. 

He can fight off the hunger pangs for a few more days.

 


End file.
